“Her Drug” is Ron Woods’s favorite Miss Alans song, but like all of Smack The Horse, there was a long gap between when it was recorded and when it was actually released.

It was recorded in April & May of 1989 at Paramount Recording Studios in Hollywood. Because it was cheaper and everybody was in their twenties, the entire record was recorded during the graveyard shift: sessions wouldn’t even start until midnight, and go until after the sun came up, always too damn early.

It’s a weird thing about song sequencing: I’ve often wondered if Smack The Horse would have been a better album had it started with “Skeleton” –> “The Indifference” instead of “The Shiny Unfeeling” –> “Yellow Gardens.”

Partially because “Skeleton” was the perfect kind of slow burn prelude/intro song like Pavement’s “We Dance” or The Church’s “Fly.” Mostly because it would have ended with the amazing “I Hear Horses” instead of the perfectly fine “Quoted Futures,” and I love albums that end big. Blame who’s next.

Mike Huffman, Jay Fung and Ron Woods were all KFSR DJs who realized that they had simpatico tastes in music and decided to form a band. I don’t think Mike was in a band at the time, but Ron was playing drums with a ska band called Secret Beat and Jay was the lead bass player in the Sandy Schaefer Memorial Swing Band, which absolutely killed it each Thursday night at The Bucket, Fresno State’s on-campus pub.

If Manny believes that “The Shiny Unfeeling” was the song that was instrumental in diverting The Miss Alans away from the dark side, Scott has a slightly different memory: he believes that song was “Yellow Gardens.” He’s mentioned more than once that it was the song he marks as a turning point.

So allow me to split the difference. I have a journal entry from September 30, 1988 (I know), a short time before the meeting that almost broke up the band, which describes my feelings about Manny’s first rehearsal with the band after his motorcycle accident at the beginning of the month.

Sure, Manny had recovered better than anyone could have hoped from being knocked off of his motorcycle by a woman who missed a stop sign on Labor Day weekend 1988 — and I’ll write more in-depth about this when I get to “Angel Death Blues” — but he still had a long way to go. For one thing, there was a hole in his memory on how to play some of the newer songs, and for another one, it wasn’t clear he even wanted to re-learn them.

It’s a weird thing about song sequencing: I’ve often wondered if Smack The Horse would have been a better album had it started with “Skeleton” –> “The Indifference” instead of “The Shiny Unfeeling” –> “Yellow Gardens.”

Partially because “Skeleton” was the perfect kind of slow burn prelude/intro song like Pavement’s “We Dance” or The Church’s “Fly.” Mostly because it would have ended with the amazing “I Hear Horses” instead of the perfectly fine “Quoted Futures,” and I love albums that end big. Blame who’s next.

That said, when you have a “Shiny Unfeeling,” how can you not lead off with it? So, they probably made the right choice.

What that meant was putting the more psychedelic stuff on the second side, as “The Indifference” only made sense following “Skeleton,” rising slowly from the sea on waves of Manny Diez guitar and phased vocals over Ron’s slicing tambourine/rim beat, slowly building and building.

In the sea the man that begs and borrows
For the will that feeds the plastic taste
Hatred it begs you
Seizing perfect life harmony
Lord but not like the seeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaa
Here lies the seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaa

It’s my favorite thing, what they do on the word “sea.” Jay playing triplets in perfect lockstep with Ron and the piano accents (Jay & Manny together, credited as “Lester Angel“), it would be cool enough, but the lush ocean of harmonies that resolve into a happy sigh of “yeahhhh” is lovely and life-affirming, while remaining totally trippy at the same time.

“The Indifference” is a song that rises and falls and rises and falls, you know, like the sea, until Manny tosses a quick guitar solo and after one last glorious harmony-drenched blissout about the sea, Scott points something out.

The sea it is so farrrrr
From the world
The world
The world
The world
The world
The world
The wo-rld

Only it sounds like he’s singing “the whoa” over and over again like he’s channelling Keanu Reeves.

Outside of “The Shiny Unfeeling,” “The Indifference” was my early favorite song on Smack The Horse, a short gorgeous tone poem that also remained eternally mysterious.

“The Indifference”

Every Certain Song Ever
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